Nov 29
2023

VersaFeed Unveils New AI Tool to Save Clients Hundreds of Hours

San Francisco, CA, November 28th, 2023: VersaFeed, a leading ad-tech provider for ecommerce retailers, today announces a new feature to its proprietary product data feed management platform: ChatGPT integration. The first product feed company to seamlessly integrate with ChatGPT, Versafeed now enables merchants to save hundreds of hours with the ability to easily update product titles, descriptions, and even category information across entire data catalogs in a matter of minutes. VersaFeed processes product catalog information ...

Beauty Virtual Try-On Experience for Google PLAs

After much anticipation, Google is now offering beauty brands a way to interact virtually with their mobile shoppers via Free Listings and Shopping Ads. AR beauty features were introduced nearly three years ago; however, only recently has any information been released about participation requirements. Here’s what you need to know: A Google Manufacturer Center account is required with proper set-up including linking to your Google Merchant Center account.Partnership with Perfect Corp or PulpoAR ...

Price Competitiveness & Best Seller Integration Strategies

VersaFeed is taking custom label strategies to the next level by integrating with Google Merchant Center’s Market Insights retail data. Both the Price Competitiveness and Best Sellers reports are currently available within the Merchant Center under the Growth section after accepting the Terms and Service for Google’s Market Insights policy. Through direct integration with these reports, VersaFeed is able to dynamically update a custom label value in product feeds based on customized logic ...

Using ChatGPT to Enhance Google & Social Feeds

With ChatGPT becoming ubiquitous across the digital landscape, VersaFeed researched the most effective ways to integrate this tech into paid media data feeds. Our early testing indicates that product titles, categories, and descriptions can be successfully enhanced with ChatGPT to improve KPIs. While this early testing has been limited and drawing broad conclusions would be premature, we have found: [Title] enhancements are most effective for boosting impressions and trafficChatGPT can be used to create unique ...

Oct 05
2023

New Feature: VersaFeed ChatGPT Integration

VersaFeed is thrilled to announce our new integration with ChatGPT for data feed optimization! Merchants and brands using VersaFeed can now utilize ChatGPT to rewrite product titles, descriptions, and categories straight from the VersaFeed.com dashboard. This unlocks a wide array of sophisticated features like: Creating more SEO rich product titlesTailoring product titles to align with certain holidays (e.g., "ChatGPT, make this title relevant to Father's Day")Updating product descriptions that might be ...

Sep 20
2023

Is Amazon Right for Your Business?

Each year, VersaFeed helps businesses explore the Amazon Marketplace and evaluate the challenges it presents. We even maintain a list of marketplace providers that we partner with. However, many businesses decide the risk is not worth the reward. This articles explore the challenges of listing on the Amazon Marketplace to help determine the best answer for your business: is Amazon a fit? Some of the common challenges that must be evaluated: An approximate 15% revenue ...

Integrating Your Catalog with Amazon and Other Marketplaces

VersaFeed believes that keeping data feed companies and marketplace integrators separate is in everyone's best interest. These two types of channels require very different tech, and merchants deserve a best-in-class solution for feeds AND marketplaces. And, while some companies do provide "all in one" solutions, we have seen the significant challenges merchants face when using these impractical tools. To that end, VersaFeed maintains relationships with several marketplace tech providers: interested in listing your inventory ...

Shopping Ads Badges and Annotations Guide

We’ve aggregated the most common PLA badges and annotations for you in the below graphic to identify their official names and we’ve covered each in detail within one of our blogs. As always, our blogs are intended to give you meaningful context on topics - we do not simply regurgitate what Google Help Center articles have to say. There’s obviously a lot of behind the scenes information involved with each so feel free ...

Aug 02
2023

Local Inventory Ads Badge + Annotations

Google makes it easy to take advantage of badges on Shopping ads and Free Listings promoting Local products. Consumers will see Local Shopping ads when the item they’re searching for is available nearby. Google lets you know this a Local ad by using the following badges: In store Pick up todayCurbsidePick up later In store Products with this badge on the ad indicate to customers that they can purchase this product in a store ...

Jul 20
2023

Shopping Feed Tips for a Smooth BTS Season

With back-to-school (BTS) spending expected to reach a new high in 2023, advertisers need to ensure their online digital ad strategy is prepared to capture as many purchases as possible. Here are some specific tips for the feed driven product ads to get you ahead of the game: Highlight promotions and special deals across Search and Social campaigns Use Google Merchant Promotions or utilize the "Sale" badge and annotation - see how here. If your regular ...

Jun 30
2023

Buy on Google Ending

Buy on Google will be sunsetting September 26, 2023. Here’s what you need to know: For current participants, listings on Search or Shopping will cease to show the Buy on Google option as of 9/26/23. No action is needed.You can terminate participation in this program sooner than 9/26 if you would like using support All order data will be available through 9/26/24 (one year post program ending)For ...

Jun 30
2023

Return Annotation for Google Shopping Ads

The Returns annotation has become a common Shopping Ad element this past year. Google first required the return policy to be set up in the Google Merchant Center to showcase on Shopping Ads but slowly started trying to estimate for brands based on website crawls. If you see a notation saying "most items", it means the policy isn't properly set up in GMC and is serving as a disclaimer. Updating the return policy in ...

Jun 05
2023

Product Ratings for Shopping Ads & Free Listings

Google can show star ratings annotations on Shopping Ads and Free Listings for products offered by eligible advertisers - officially referred to as Product Ratings. Both the product and advertiser must meet certain requirements to be eligible. Find out more below: Product has to have reviews. Reviews can be from any retailer that sells this same product (Google leans on the GTIN value in the feed to aggregate across all retailers). Let’s assume Website A ...

May 05
2023

Highlighting Shipping on Google

As Google continues to increase the visibility of product delivery options across Search and Shopping, here are a few ways to make sure your shipping options are highlighted accurately for potential customers: Free Shipping Annotation Products with a Shipping rate of $0 set up in the Shipping rate table within Google Merchant Center are eligible to show "Free Shipping" on Shopping ads and/or Free Listings. Shipping Time Annotations Delivery time can be an important ...

May 04
2023

Feed Driven Product Ads for Groceries

With digital grocery sales on the rise (predicted to account for 20% of all grocery sales by 2026), retailers need to ensure they are keeping up. Google and Meta both offer support for product feed/catalog driven ads that not only help drive more traffic to grocers’ websites but can also help to promote delivery and store pick up/drive to store as well. According to Google, 37% of grocery shoppers said they used a ...

Mar 20
2023

Price Drop Badge/Annotation on Google

There are many ways Google highlights products when their prices change - specifically lower. The Sale badge and Special Offer annotation (aka Merchant Promotion) do a great job showcasing temporary price cuts on items but there’s another badge that can show up to alert consumers of a good deal. A Price Drop badge will show on the image and in the price section of the PLA, Google will explain what the drop is. Google’s ...

Mar 03
2023

Supporting Customer Retention with PLA

With inflation top-of-mind for both merchants and customers, maintaining a loyal base of customers is more crucial than ever in the ecommerce space. Loyalty, however, does not mean you still won’t have to fight to keep those customers. Here are a few tips for highlighting the areas that keep shoppers coming back to your digital storefront: Advertise Free Shipping Ease and speed of delivery are often the deciding factor for consumers overwhelmed with options ...

Feb 07
2023

Google's Top Quality Store Badge

Earning the Coveted Blue Checkmark While competition for PLA real estate continues to heat up, there are several small but significant additions that merchants can make to their Google Shopping program to help gain an edge on a crowded SERP. One of these is Google’s “Top Quality Store" badge. This badge appears to the end user similar to the blue check marks already popular on social media platforms. Quality, trusted stores are highlighted on ...

Jan 26
2023

Leveraging Your Product Feed for PMax Success

With the roll-out of Google’s automatic migration from Smart Shopping to Performance Max Campaigns, traditional PLA is now just one of many forms that your product listings can take across Google properties. For example, PMax campaigns will place products in front of potential customers who may not be actively searching for a specific item using formats like Display and Discover Ads. The addition of a few key product attributes in your feed can give ...

Jan 23
2023

Google Hosted Local Storefront : LIA

Google has been steering advertisers for years now towards the Merchant Hosted Local Storefront, even providing them with 2 options - Basic and Full. Here, we will be covering details around the rarely talked about Google Hosted Local Storefront (GHLSF) . While these are uncommon in today’s SERP, the reality is that there are many advertisers who could likely benefit from this. These are advertisers that can’t meet Google’s requirements even for the “Basic ...

Jan 18
2023

Google Merchant Promotions for Local Inventory Ads

With Google’s Local Promotions moving from beta to a full-fledged feature, merchants running Local Inventory Ads now have the option to display promotions that are redeemable either online, in store, or both. Local promotions may be submitted either manually in Google Merchant Center or via a Google Sheets local promotions feed template that is easy to fill in with your promotion details. Once the Google sheet is updated, you can upload to the GMC ...

Dec 23
2022

Google Manufacturer Center :: Part 2

Google gives manufacturers control of how their products are presented across Google through the Manufacturer Center. Product content can be pulled over from the Google Merchant Center or a feed can be uploaded directly to the Manufacturer Center. The GTIN attribute is used to match products across retailer’s Merchant Center feeds. If a brand is participating in sending content to the Manufacturer Center, Google will utilize this GTIN’s content, for certain placements like ...

Google Manufacturer Center :: Part 1

Google's Manufacturer Center is another tool to help brands improve the shopping experience for its products across the Google properties. There are 2 main purposes for using Manufacturer Center: 1Gain insight into your products' aggregated performance across all of Google - Impression and click data (and more) from your efforts and your resellers at the product level.2Control of product content in certain shopping experiences on Google (covered in Part 2)This blog (Part 1 ...

Dec 07
2022

New Discovery Campaigns Use Product Feeds

While Discovery Ads on Google isn’t technically a new concept, the ability to leverage your product feed to tailor these ads around products is. Here’s a quick overview of what Discovery Campaigns are about: Ads can show across multiple Google Properties in places where consumers would be browsing their favorite content:YouTube Home and Watch Next feedsThe Google Discover feedGmail Promotions and Social tabsThis campaign would align more closely with display as the ...

Oct 24
2022

Regional Availability and Pricing (RAAP) for Grocery Chains on Google Shopping

In response to a growing demand for convenient online shopping, grocery stores are rapidly adapting to increase their digital presence and expand order fulfillment options. With the introduction of Regional Availability and Pricing (RAAP) last year, Google has made regional inventory and price information independent from physical storefronts, focusing on an entirely online end-to-end shopping experience. This feature is available across the Google Shopping network in both paid and free organic shopping listings, allowing merchants ...

Oct 11
2022

Shopping Feed Tips for a Smooth Holiday Season

Many things go into preparing for the busy holiday season. Planning budgets for big days, sometimes down to the hour, can be time intensive but can have a large pay off. Reviewing bidding strategies to make sure automation will adjust properly on high volume days will be a headache but is a must. When it comes to preparations involving your programs that leverage a product feed, rest assured that VersaFeed is at your disposal throughout ...

Oct 10
2022

Getting the Most out of Social Shopping Feeds

As shoppable ads continue to grow their share of social media ad space it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to ensure that their product feeds are fully optimized specifically for social media ad platforms. Meta has led the charge integrating shoppable content into social ad campaigns, and their Commerce Manager remains the standard for most social media shopping ads platforms. With Meta’s feed recommendations in mind, here’s a handy list of some ...

Google Gets Smart With Titles

Google has quietly introduced a new "enhancement" to Shopping ad titles, referred to in their [title] attribute documentation as Optimized titles. Google will dynamically prepend product features or attributes to the front of your PLA title using values from the product feed that offer the best match to the customer’s search query, separating these attributes from the product title with hyphens. A real life example of this new feature in action can be found ...

Jul 08
2022

What Happened to CSE's?

For those of us that were online shopping prior to 2013, sites like PriceGrabber.com, Nextag.com, Shopping.com and ShopZilla.com were a big deal. They were the destination for finding the best price for a product you wanted to buy online. Digital advertisers would diligently send data feeds to each of these big players, including "Froogle" (which was Google's Free Listings) and manage their unique account logins, bidding, etc. May 31, 2012 ...

May 31
2022

Data Feed Considerations When Replatforming

Over our 16 years in business building data feeds for retail clients, we've experienced quite a number of ecommerce replatforms. Our #1 recommendation on this is to plan for problems. There's always going to be something that comes up but hopefully with preparation and awareness, it will be minimal. Here are things we've observed over the years to help you stay ahead: Losing Google Merchant Center Site Verification & Claim: Make sure your ...

Apr 25
2022

Solutions for Availability Restrictions

The steps below can solve for the situations where: The ability to ship a product depends upon the location of the shipping address (referred to as ‘Region’).The price of a product is consistent across all locations and does not change, no matter where the user is located. For any regional pricing situations, the full Regional Availability and Pricing (RAAP) solution is needed. How to Tell Google What Areas You Do Not Ship to Within ...

Apr 08
2022

Inaccurate Availability Warnings for Regional Shipping Limitations

Websites selling items that limit shipping based on location alone will have another hoop they will need to know how to jump through to advertise with Google Shopping ads. A common example of this is any website selling alcohol that can be shipped. With so many various delivery/shipping restrictions on alcohol at the state level and lower, Google Merchant Center needs to be told what areas are off limits (no shipping allowed). Google Merchant ...

Mar 03
2022

Preparing for Planned Site Outages

From time-to-time websites need to come offline for maintenance. There's no way of telling Google about this so when they perform their regular checks of your data feed against your site, it sets off a wave of events that can include product disapprovals. So in addition to temporarily pausing your ad campaigns to avoid paying for clicks to a dead site, there is also a step that needs to be taken within your product ...

Jan 24
2022

Google's New Deals Feature

Within the Shopping tab, Google has launched a new feature allowing shoppers to quickly filter out the best product deals of the day. There are a few ways to get there and a few key differences to expect. What Does it Look Like and How to Find it When an applicable search query such as "deals", "sales", "promotions", "Black Friday", etc occurs on the Shopping tab, Google is prompted to redirect to this new Deals ...

Dec 16
2021

Merchant Promotion vs Sale Price Annotations / Badge

Google steadily introduces enhancements to Shopping ads and before you can execute, you have to know how to choose the right approach. When product prices are discounted during a sale, there are 2 common options that websites will utilize to communicate the price cut. Taking a look at the product landing page can typically clue you in on what to do next to ensure that your ads effectively promote this offer. Discount Shown on Landing ...

Oct 26
2021

How to Set Up a Google Merchant Promotion

Check EligibilityGoogle Merchant Promotions are only applicable to use in certain situations. See the comprehensive list of Promotion Policies Quick Points: Coupon codes are ONLY REQUIRED for Free/Discount Shipping offers. Google does NOT require them for % off on merchandise. HOWEVER, if they are needed to make the promo function properly on the site, then they should be submitted with the promo details.The promo should offer an ADDED benefit. Google Shopping policies state that ...

Jun 22
2020

Google Feed Specification 2020 Updates

Each year Google updates their Google Merchant Center (GMC) feed specification with modest changes to how merchants should submit their product data. This year is no different and Google has just announced the changes as follows: Changes available now:Two new attributes are now available to submit: product_highlight and product_detail. These attributes let you submit additional product data to Google in a generic fashion. product_highlight allows you to submit bulleted lists of product highlights. product_detail ...

Jun 09
2020

Facebook Shops Analysis

Key: FB/IG = Facebook/Instagram (Note: Facebook Shops is rapidly changing, this information is accurate as of early June 2020) Facebook Shops was announced on May 19th, 2020 and it immediately generated significant buzz. However, there are many questions on features, required integration efforts, and how much revenue it will ultimately generate for businesses. What is it?Facebook is enhancing how merchants can list inventory on their FB/IG business 'homepage'. Through a new "Shops ...

Free Product Listings on Google Shopping

Google recently announced that they now offer an option for Free Product Listings on Google Shopping. This change went into effect in the US at the end of April with an expected Global rollout by the end of the year. What does this mean? Some of the digital real estate on the Google Shopping tab is now free through the “Surfaces across Google” program in the Merchant Center. What does it NOT mean? That Google ...

Feb 13
2020

Structured Data Help for Google Price/Availability Suspensions

Part 2 of our Google Merchant Center inaccurate price/availability suspension warning screencast series. Here we cover the gory details of what Google expects your structured data to look like, including examples with variants (size/color variations that may be priced differently). Links referenced in the video: Part 1: Google Suspension Warnings for Price/Availability GMC Structured Data OverviewGMC and Schema.org Attributes ExplainedGoogle Structured Data Testing Tool

Feb 10
2020

Google Suspension Warnings for Price/Availability

This video discusses Google Merchant Center suspension warnings for price and/or availability violations. John reviews the various parts of your website and data feed to help merchants understand what the real issues are and how to fix. Part 2: Structured Data Help for Google Price/Availability Suspensions

Jan 21
2020

Timed Feed Modifications

VersaFeed is excited to announce the release of a highly anticipated new feature: Timed Feed Modifications. This new feature allows users to schedule complex feed changes anytime in the future without manual oversight. Need to setup promotions or launch new products at midnight on Saturday? With feed mods, changes can be setup in advance ensuring a better night's sleep for marketing and technical teams! Setup1Create/edit the desired feed modification.2In the Schedule section ...

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